To Overclock or not to Overclock.

[ragolis]

I have got a thoroughbred barton Athlon XP 2600 the problem is its only running at 1.92ghz
I have seen reviews on the internet and says that the athlon xp 2600 can be stable at 2.16ghz its an old processor so i need some advice should i just buy a new one which means new motherboard and all that stuff or should i just overclock it and change the multiplier and not risk burning system, i have read lots of overclocking going well but I have also read about ones that went wrong so im not sure whether to or not

[MadduckUK]

i used to run my barton 2500+ at 2.4ghz, clocking it down to 2.2 during the stupid hot weather weve had recently. not for stability but for piece of mind. temps were getting a little too high for my liking. i dont think you'll see any descent improvement going up the 200Mhz your suggesting. so if its not fast enough as it is now id start looking for an upgrade.

[BUFF]

I have got a thoroughbred barton Athlon XP 2600 the problem is its only running at 1.92ghz
I have seen reviews on the internet and says that the athlon xp 2600 can be stable at 2.16ghz

If it's a Barton then 1.917 is the correct speed, if it's a T'bred then 2.133 if it's a 266fsb or 2.083 if it's a 333 fsb model.

That board isn't going to be a very good overclocker though.
The question is what do you expect to achieve by overclocking i.e what is your norml usage & how will it be affected?

[ragolis]

My normal operating temperature is 30 degrees im thinking of buying a new heatsink and fan AKASA ak 827, the multiplier currently is fsb frequency is 166.5, bus speed 333 current multiplier is 11.5
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=129198

[BUFF]

that would make it a Barton then.
Can you actually change the multi on that board & have it stick (seeing as AMD started superlocking)?

[ragolis]

Just going to to try it out by changing bios settings at start up

[Speedo]

If you're not sure about it, don't bother.

Mild overclocking can be fine, however you still need to do stability checks to make sure you're not going to corrupt anything on the side, furthur overclocking will require more attention and time and it's well worth researching any (good) guides you can find before you even consider it.

You should look at what you hope to achieve from overclocking, whether your system is 'mission critical' (i.e. you use it for work, your business, have important files that aren't backed up, couldn't live without it if you corrupted your install.. etc) and whether you have the time and interest available to fiddle around.

If you go ahead it's worth grabbing Memtest86, 3DMark200x, PCMark200x, Prime95.. various other bits to check stability. It's been over a year since I overclocked anything (purposely bought a shuttle to limit myself!) so my memory is a little rusty on the matter .

[MadduckUK]

purposely bought a shuttle to limit myself!

but is that a limit? from my experience and from the odd review they dont skimp on clocking features

[dave87]

but is that a limit? from my experience and from the odd review they dont skimp on clocking features

They do when changing the voltage on memory (Vdimm) causes the shuttle to blow itself up (Nforce 2 era)

[MadduckUK]

They do when changing the voltage on memory (Vdimm) causes the shuttle to blow itself up (Nforce 2 era)

(sn45g era) hey hey iv been here man! (see the sff section). but that doesnt mean you cant put the mem devider down and then bump it back up by ramping the fab does it? you cant use that as an excuse

[Spud1]

first question - why?

The performance difference will be negligable - in fact I would place money that you won't notice a real difference in performance past the 'placebo effect' (ie you have overclocked, so you will convnice yourself that everythings 2x faster or something )

A jump of 100/200mhz will not make a difference - I used to overclock everything I could, which seemed a great idea at the time - my 3dmark scores went up and up, and I convinced myself I had a much better machine than previously. To take the last machine I overclocked, it was a Barton core 2800+ which is standard at just over 2ghz. I took that up to 2.4 ghz from day one. Alongside clocking up the ram as much as possible, and the 9800pro (which did quite well) I could boost my 3Dmark 2001 scores by a few hundred, and game framerates by a few fps.

All it was really doing though was increasing the size of my e-penis..I wasn't really saving money or getting better performance

Put simply - unless you are overclocking current/up to date hardware, or older hardware by a large amount there isn't really much point other than getting bragging rights..Buy a new CPU and Board (or second hand from here?), you could probably get a 3ghz P4 and a mobo to go with it for 70/80quid second hand, which will give you a huge realistic performance boost

[ragolis]

I want to overclock any speed improvement is better than what i have now my processor has 512kb l2 cache but 1.92 ghz speed i have heard that the athlon xp 2600+ is stable up to 2.16ghz so at least its an improvement

[MadduckUK]

well if you really want to.. is your ram all pc3200? if yes then just up the fsb to 400 fpm 333 slowly, checking every 10mhz that the process or still stable, if it isnt move the core voltage up a notch and test again, 400 fsb should give you 2.3Ghz. which according to:

Athlon XP 3000+: Barton, 512KB L2, 2100MHz, 400MHz FSB.
Athlon XP 3200+: Barton, 512KB L2, 2200MHz, 400MHz FSB.

would make yours a:

Athlon XP 3400+: Barton, 512KB L2, 2300MHz, 400MHz FSB.

if your ram isnt pc3200 or your motherboard doesnt suppourt 400Mhz fsb's id f*** it off and stay as you are.

linky to follow: http://www.techtastic.ca/reviews3/barton-2600-2.html